Monument à la gloire du service de santé militaire

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

The war memorial of the military health services is part of the Grange Blanche district, devoted to hospital functions. It was placed on a roundabout in front of the Edouard-Herriot hospital (partially registered as a historic monument), designed by Tony Garnier, and near the school of nurses and the faculty of medicine and pharmacy, designed by the same architect as the monument, Paul Bellemain. This perspective is continued with the Desgenettes hospital and since the end of the 1960s with the hospital complex located at Bron. The former location of the monument can be visualised thanks to a postcard which also shows the former stone base of Villebois, now disappeared. The Semaly archives make it possible to reconstruct the moving of the monument to the corner of the current bd Jean XXIII and avenue des Frères Lumière (moving it from the 3rd to the 8th arrondissement) during the construction of a metro line in 1984. It was then fitted with a base covered with pink tiles and placed near the gable of a building. Also, the sculpted reliefs located on this side are hardly visible. This is one of the latest monuments in the corpus (1938). The inauguration speeches make this well felt; it is no longer time to wish for lasting peace but to prepare for a new conflict. In 1933 a competition was launched in memory of the members of the health service who died for France. The national territory houses several military health schools, the one in Lyon having been founded in 1888 to replace that in Strasbourg situated in the "occupied zone" since 1870. Lyon is chosen, with the support of Mayor Herriot, to house this monument of national scope. During the conflict, out of 22,000 doctors recorded in France, 18,000 were mobilised, no other profession bringing such a massive contribution to the defence of the country. The ambition of the committee was broader since the monument is also a monument of colonial spirit, honouring the sacrifices of the health service also on colonial territories, Indochina, Tonkin, Madagascar, Tunisia, Morocco, Dahomey... The project chosen in 1936 was by architect Paul Bellemain, associated with sculptor Louis Bertola, the work taking place from September 1937 to June 1938. An inscription engraved on the monument spells out the very particular technique of the reliefs: "bas-reliefs composed and directly carved in the block L. Bertola". This is a technique similar to that employed from 1926 by Sarrabezolles, for example for the giants Lydéric and Phynaert at the town hall of Lille (classified in 2002), the sculptor carving fresh cement. In addition to his participation in the war memorial in Tête d'Or park, Bertola created the sculptures of the building at 9 quai Jean-Moulin in Lyon (1934, architect G. Curtelin, remarkable contemporary architecture label), as well as the Christ on the façade of the church of Saint-Antoine de Gerland (1934-1950, architect G. Bonnamour). For the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, he notably created a spectacular representation of Metal. The monument consists of a monumental shaft to which is attached the Armed Nation. In the lower part is found a caduceus surrounded by a group of soldiers, a nurse and stretcher-bearers carrying a soldier. The reliefs on the small sides are devoted to Medicine and represent Radiography, Dentistry, Vaccination and Pharmacy, illustrated through scenes of charity located in the colonies. The various services, navy, army, colonial troops, are presented on a large bas-relief. Attacks by toxic gases are also evoked on the bas-relief on the reverse. Rescue dogs are also not forgotten. The relief is incised in concrete, thus giving rise to talk of treatment in the Egyptian manner. The poor sanitary condition of the sculptures, their encrustation, impede their readability.